Thursday, October 24, 2019
Why I like Enterprise's much-maligned Xindi story
The Xindi story line of Enterprise is a surprisingly nuanced response to 9/11 and subsequent events, tackling such questions as, is it okay to respond out of vengeance, or only self defense? Are there some moral absolutes that can’t be broken, even to save millions of lives? In war, how do we weigh the lives of the enemy against our own? How good does intelligence have to be to justify killing, or even starting a war? Is killing to prevent possible, even probable future killing defensible? Who decides, the military, the politicians, the citizens? How do people who have seen and done terrible things in the line of duty move on with their lives? And it’s not preachy or facile – it really digs into the grey areas.
Friday, October 4, 2019
A Star Trek Morality Primer
Instead, I offer these series-by-series nuggets:
TOS: Do the right thing. However, the right thing will change from week to week, depending on who wrote the script.
TAS: The universe is confusing. Just go with it. Nothing lasts longer than 24 minutes anyway.
TNG: If you do the right thing, all will be well, because those are the rules.
DS9: Out here on the frontier, the rules are fungible. Do the best you can. Mostly just try not to start a war or a religion. But if you do, you’d better prevail. At both.
VOY: One for all and all for getting home.
ENT: Doing the right thing will generally get you absolutely nowhere, but pay it lip service from time to time because your series has an inferiority complex.
DSC: Doing the right thing will seriously mess you up, because streaming TV is dark 'n gritty.
PIC (speculative): The rules are back, but in a more neutral color palette.
Before I go, I'd like to take a moment to recognize that, at times, Star Trek really does deliver some profound insights with intelligence and subtlety. And sometimes, it's more like this:
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